Month: February 2016

Apple makes its operating systems accessible to people with a wide variety of physical limitations, but its tendency to rely on visual trickery like faux 3D effects has caused problems for users with vestibular processing problems. Technology journalist Craig Grannell has been talking about this for a while, most recently in a new blog post.

Grannell talks about the hoops he has to jump through to get OS X working to his satisfaction now that El Capitan has incorporated System Integrity Protection (SIP), a new security feature.

I do not, thankfully, have the same problems Grannell does with motion effects in iOS actually causing physical discomfort, but I do find it utterly unnecessary and superfluous, and shut it off when I can.

McElhearn echoes some complaints I’ve had in recent years as my vision has begun to falter. I’m having more and more problems accessing content and devices not only because of stuff that Apple is doing but because of stuff that Apple developers are — and aren’t — doing.

The entire Apple/iOS developer community needs to pay more attention to these issues; we’re not all 25-year olds with excellent vision.

Atari Vault is the latest attempt to cash in on retro nostalgia for old-school video games. If you’re a gamer in your 40s as I am or if you just love the old coinop experience, you may be interested in this new package coming to Steam this spring.

Atari Vault isn’t unique – Atari and other publishers have used emulation technology for years to resurrect classic titles. What makes Vault a bit different is its obsessive detail with cabinet art and other details to help create an immersive experience.

There’s a gallery with tidbits “from our own archives,” as Labunka puts it, with original box art for Atari 2600 versions of the games, instruction manuals, promo materials, and the like. Anything and everything to offer a full picture of what these games looked, felt, and sounded like in their original contexts.